The Media Online’s weekly round up. Pfizer appoints MediaCom Beyond Advertising SA as digital agency, Boomtown’s McNish promoted. John Brown Media appointed content agency for Leisure Books/Leserskring. AdJoin partners with DMP Krux. Media24 honoured at Responsible Drinking Media Awards. Bowmans commits to ‘one firm’ strategy and announces new brand. Minister Pravin Gordhan to deliver opening address at inaugural BDFM Investment Summit
This week’s BIG move: Pfizer appoints MediaCom Beyond Advertising SA as digital agency
Pfizer, one of the world’s premier biopharmaceutical companies, has appointed MediaCom’s content division, Mediacom Beyond Advertising, as its digital agency for South Africa. MediaCom Beyond Advertising’s nearly 800 employees create content strategies and execute projects for some of the globe’s largest advertisers across 44 markets.
The South African arm will create, execute, and manage all of the digital content across Pfizer’s entire local brand portfolio, including iconic products such as Centrum, Caltrate, and Advil.
In an era that is defined by digital interactions, everything is linked and connected – especially consumers. As such, media planning, buying, and placement across multiple media channels must be aligned to fast changing consumer behaviour. Consequently, MediaCom developed an entirely new way of operating – designed to scale with the progression of this landscape. This entails a distinctive approach which optimises a client’s entire eco-system of content and connections, not just individual silos.
“Mediacom Beyond Advertising is a new breed of services. We are born from data and insights, an integrated content and creative agency for the digital age, “ says Federico Dedeu, head of MediaCom South Africa’s Beyond Advertising division (also known as MBA). “Our media heritage has given us the understanding to leverage data in such a way that our ideas and concepts are based on true consumer insights rather than gut feel.”
Who’s moved where
Boomtown’s McNish promoted
Joining Boomtown as in intern in 2013, Lauren McNish has progressed through the agency ranks and has been appointed as business group head.
“I persevered to get my foot in the door at Boomtown, starting out as an intern during my holidays with the hope of full time employment. I set my sights on this position from day one and gave it my all to get to where I am. What an incredible journey it has been! I’m thrilled to be co-leading a team of business and creative people to grow our client’s brands from strength to strength through team work and being passionate about what we do,” says McNish.
In her role, she will manage a team of business executives, as well as creatives for a group of agency clients. “Working with FMCG brands such as Flying Fish has been an exciting space for me and growing with the client has been a recent career highlight for me,” adds McNish.
With four of the six agency group heads being female, the lean to female leaders is unusual for the advertising industry. “Senior agency position primarily sees men sitting in the roles,” adds Boomtown MD, Andrew MacKenzie. “So to add Lauren to the senior client team is one step we as an agency are hoping the industry will follow in.”
Who’s won what
John Brown Media appointed as content agency for Leisure Books/Leserskring
John Brown Media is thrilled to announce that it has been selected as the content agency to produce the catalogues for the iconic Leserskring/Leisure Books audience of book lovers.
Leserskring/Leisure Books has been delivering best-sellers to the South African public for more than 36 years, and in doing so became a lifeline for many time-poor book lovers around the country. Under new ownership and needing a brand new look and feel for their catalogues, they turned to John Brown South Africa to revamp die leser and the reader.
Says the reader editor Samantha Page, “Leisure Books is an iconic South African literary institution and I am incredibly excited to build on its solid legacy and steer it into a more contemporary space. Every aspect of the redesign and content strategy is aimed at promoting a culture of reading in our country and that’s incredibly energising”.
Leserskring/Leisure Books’ marketing manager, Carla Pullen, says, “The new catalogues are beautiful and we are so excited about the introduction of various new elements, great feature articles and snippets of information about some best-loved authors. They definitely usher in a new era for the book clubs beautifully”.
AdJoin joins forces with DMP Krux
AdJoin Media announced this week that it has confirmed market-leading DMP, Krux, as it’s exclusive data management partner. AdJoin offers publishers an opportunity to band together in order to leverage their remnant inventory making a combination of first and third- party data available to buyers across the AdJoin network. Krux’s technology helps power this strategy.
One of the major reasons that AdJoin Media selected Krux as its data management partner is because of Krux’s deep integrations across the advertising and marketing technology ecosystem, including its integration with the Rubicon Project, which is a critically important partner for AdJoin.
“Many publishers believe that programmatic media buying has become a ‘race to the bottom’.” However, by using Krux’s technology publishers can better demonstrate the value of their digital assets by allowing marketers to target the right message, to the right consumer, at the right time,” says Daniel Courtenay MD AdJoin Media.
Media24 honoured at Responsible Drinking Media Awards
Media24 scooped four big awards at the 2016 Diageo SA Responsible Drinking Media Awards last night in Johannesburg. The awards recognise journalistic efforts in supporting, promoting and contributing to the responsible drinking agenda and ultimately helping change consumer behaviour.
Media24 received:
Best Magazine Vida Li Sik (DRUM) for “Living with an alcoholic” An account of what to do and where to go for help as the spouse of an alcoholic.
Best Community Media Desiree Rorke (TygerBurger) for “What do you drink if you don’t drink” An interesting read about drinking too much.
Consumers’ Choice Award Nicole John (Maritzburg Fever) for “SADD educates students about alcohol use” A new category as voted by the South African public on Facebook.
Media House of the Year (for the second consecutive year) Media24 for having submitted the most amount of entries this year.
“We want to thank each and every journalist for creating content that gets South Africans thinking responsibly about the way they consume alcohol. These awards have been put in place to acknowledge and encourage them to keep doing so, “says Jeff Milliken, managing director of Diageo South Africa.
The winner of each category won R15 000 and were publicly acknowledged for their efforts to help combat alcohol abuse in South Africa.
Who’s making moves
Bowmans commits to ‘one firm’ strategy and announces new brand
Bowman Gilfillan Africa Group has announced that from 1 September 2016 it started operating across Africa under one brand name, Bowmans.
Chairman and senior partner, Rob Legh, says, “This is a natural step forward for us. For some time, we have seen an increasing level of corporate and public sector activity across the continent. The model we chose to address this has involved establishing offices in key jurisdictions and working in a fully integrated way to deliver a one-stop service to our clients. However, while our offices are integrated, our brand has not reflected this until now.”
The firm’s vision is to be the leading Pan-African law firm for corporate and institutional clients working on the most complex legal matters on the continent.
Along with the new brand name and logo, the firm is highlighting what it believes to be its differentiator: legal knowledge, plus real experience of local complexities on-the-ground. This is encapsulated in the phrase ‘The value of knowing’, which has obvious benefits for clients.
Minister Pravin Gordhan to deliver opening address at inaugural BDFM Investment Summit
Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan has been confirmed to deliver the opening address at the inaugural Business Day Financial Mail Investment Summit, brought to you by Sasfin Wealth, taking place on 13 September in Sandton. Gordhan will address an audience of institutional and private investors, as well as business leaders who will themselves be delivering presentations at the summit.
Following the recent elections, the BDFM Investment Summit provides an opportunity for investment experts to unpack their thinking around issues of the South African economy, beyond the pages of the Business Day and Financial Mail titles. The industry engagement provides an opportunity for workable solutions for investments to be crafted.
David Shapiro, Deputy Chairman of Sasfin Wealth will be delivering the keynote address.
The full agenda for the Investment Summit can be viewed online.
